AM: I decided to get up early and head to St. Petersburg to see the Dali museum. I felt that Dali would not fit into my uninspired theme, however, it seemed like to good an opportunity to pass up.
It turns out Dali is very uninspiring! His father didn’t approve of his wanting to be a painter, so in his early years he just copied the styles of famous painters – sometimes better than those painters themselves. The females he painted were always of his sister because she was pretty much the only female he knew. This museum is interesting because they have quite a few early Dali paintings. One he painted at age 10, of a nightscene of his home town, I found particularly beautiful. When he was older, Dali did enter an art school where they mainly taught realism. Even though he completed all of his classes, he didn’t graduate. This is because, at his final exams, he told the staff that they could not judge him since he knew way more about art than they did. When he was older he fell in love with a woman who appeared in of most of his paintings. While he deeply loved her, they believe that the relationship was never consumated. How uninspiring! I loved Dali’s paintings. They make me smile!
PM: I picked up a few cuban sandwiches to go and headed for Orlando to meet with Mom (I hope). Mom did indeed arrive and we made it to the resort without incident (minus 2 delicious cuban sandwiches.)
The next task was we needed to acquire our 5 day Disney World tickets, which Mom purchased from the Internet at a discount (cue ominous forshadowing music).
We came to discover that these tickets were located 7 miles away at another resort. We couldn’t figure out the *exact* address, because this so-called *resort* wouldn’t give it to us over the phone. They just kept saying, “you can’t miss it.” At this point Mom was slightly crazed. Mom told the woman on the phone that she thought these were Disney tickets that we could pick up at any Disney resort because she got them right off the Disney web site. The woman says, “Oh no, M’am, we have a look-a-like Disney site, but it isn’t Disney at all.” Whaaaa?!?
Mom and I hopped in a cab and $21 later we found this so-called *resort* front desk. I asked Mom if, at this point, we had spent more than we saved on the discount. The cab driver chuckled, Mom pursed her lips. We lept out, asked the cab driver to wait and rushed in to get our tickets to fun fun fun. The man at the counter said that this wasn’t the right desk, we needed to go another 3 blocks down to the welcome center. We hopped in the cab and roared over to the welcome center. At this point Mom was winding up to super angry/whiny mode – I’d say we were at orange alert. The cab driver felt sorry for us, so he had turned off the meter about a block back.
We lept out and rushed to the Welcome Center where a woman (German!) confirmed out ticket reservation and gave us a voucher. Then she said, we had to walk across the street to the club house to get the “real” voucher. Steam came out of Mom’s ears! Very much like after Roger Rabbit drinks alcohol. (See, we were already having a Disney moment.) I sent Mom back to the cab and rushed over to the club house. There has a Disney ticket booth right there with a sign outside of it that said “Will be back in a hour.” Whaaaaa?!?!?!
I stormed over to the concierge, prepared to do battle with the woman at the counter (German, again!). She automatically got me my “real” voucher then proceeded to tell me that I needed to go to Disney World and get my “real” tickets at any information center.
I headed back to the cab with a silly grin on my face. I can only imagine what Mom will do when she hears about this next hoop we have to jump through. She took it pretty well, and the cab driver (meter still off) heads towards the greatest place on earth.
We made it through the rest of the night just fine. We split a plate of cold crustaceans then danced the night away at the 70′s and 80′s club.